Frisbee Time
We arrived in London almost by accident, a team of Rude Boys on a trip we’d earned by winning a National Championship the previous fall. I say almost because on that previous trip to Austin Texas to collect our championship, my roommate Guido and I slept through two alarms only to be woken up by a last minute phone call.
“Moons,” Joey Y said. “Are you coming?”
I looked at the clock, one of those wind-up Timex jobs you could buy at CVS for ten bucks in 1982 when the Rude Boys rode a magical wave of success from Mars, Pennsylvania all the way to Gothenberg, Sweden. I looked at the time and said out loud, “Oh sh#t Guids, it’s 7:30 and the plane leaves in twenty two minutes.”
“You have all the tickets and they say the plane’s not going to take off until you get here,” Joey explains as Guids and I get dressed and out the door in what seems like seconds. This is what happens when a young sport is run by an equally young group of people. Stuff’s gonna happen, and when it does, you learn to deal with it. Turns out to be good training for life, but first we had to get to the airport.
I don’t remember if we took a cab or drove my green Datson 610 wagon, but we managed to get there in less than a half hour, or at least that’s how I remember it. These the days before TSA security, so you could run straight to the gate. The flight attendants were half pissed, half amused by this group claiming to champions in a sport they’d never heard of. I handed them the seventeen tickets in their sleeves, and we flew our way into a weekend of pouring rain, mud, though ultimately, glory.
Back then, when you won the National Championship, your team’s biggest reward was the honor to represent your country at a World Championship, which in 1983 was in Gothenberg, Sweden. But first, we had to organize our trip, raise some money, and actually get ourselves on and off the plane without similar mishap. While we managed all that, by the time we arrived at Heathrow, we’d had it—totally exhausted from preparations and all-night flight—so we piled our bags into a heap right there in baggage claim, and crashed for a few hours while a few of us went off to rent cars for our journey. The mill, as we called it, happened spontaneously right there in baggage claim, seemingly as good a place as any to catch-up on much needed sleep. Oh to be in your twenties and clueless again. People must have been horrified, but we shrugged it off as normal behavior.
First stop when in London? Meet the Battersea Boleros in none other than Battersea Park, the very same place Pink Floyd memorialized on the cover of their Animals album. “Forget Big Ben,” I say to whomever is with me when we arrive at the field. “Look at that,” I go on while pointing at the upside down pig power plant. I remember loving the feeling, if somewhat dumbfounded that such a place actually existed. Album covers more sureal than real, a bit like this trip.
Pictured here is Rude Boy Kent Greenwald playing defense against one of the Boleros on the day of arrival. The Boleros prove to be most excellent hosts, too excellent as it turns out. Second stop when arriving in the UK—a pub of course, which is where we lost any of the tiny amount of maturity we’d displayed to get this trip organized and off the ground. The night turned out to be long, so long as to make use miserably late for our second game scheduled to take place the very next day in a small town south of London. Unfortunately, a town a couple hours drive away. We didn’t leave London until after we were supposed to arrive.
“Where are you?” the captain of the team asked me when we talked on the phone.
“So sorry, some of us aren’t feeling so well this morning,” my feeble answer.
“We have the whole town here to see the game,” they pleaded.
On this occasion, we made traditional Frisbee time of being an hour late look good, instead arriving three hours after we said we would. They’d promoted the game to friends and family, and by the time of our arrival, most of the spectators were gone. Passing rain showers didn’t help matters. Luckily for us, the host team didn’t hold a grudge, and we managed to win their affection by the time evening rolled around.
Pictured here are the Rude Boys and Battersea Boleros, posing together after our scrimmage in Battersea Park. What a wonderful way to kick off our European Tour which took us from London, through France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and finally to Sweden for the first World Ultimate Championships.
